Erasure Plan
by reminiscent-afterthought
Summary: [AT, The Shields Fall First series] It's not easy, erasing a person. Especially without a time machine. At least one of their target thorns haven't won a grand tournament and told the whole world their name.


**A/N:** Written for the Green Room 2015 (Rlt), challenge #6 – the Persona non-Grata challenge, and for the Mega Prompts Challenge (DMWA), quotes prompt #22 – "I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." ― Maya Angelou.

Part of the same series as Flock of Birds, but the two fics are talking about totally different bits of the grand story so you don't have to have read the other yet. At some point the gaps will be filled in…though it may be a different lifetime, knowing me. :D

Contains mentinos of all yugioh series up to Arc-V, though it's largely Arc V/GX hence the two in the crossover (and the fact that FF only allows two…). But that's enough babbling from me. Enjoy!

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 _The Shields Fall First_

 **Erasure Plan**

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Erasing people from the flow of time was surprisingly easy, and surprisingly difficult.

The nameless Pharaoh had done it. Aporia had done it as well – though in the latter's case, the erasure had been unwrought. For both, it had been a path back to the past that allowed them to accomplish it. Paradox, using the same time travelling method, had come close. He however had been thwarted – and two of the three who'd thwarted him were the nameless Pharaoh and the one who undid Aporia's rewritten past.

And then there was Darkness who removed Fujiwara Yusuke from the world in an entirely different manner. But they could hope to understand Darkness even less than transverse the boundaries of time. Truthfully, the time machine was the most sensible option, if only it hadn't been made two hundred years hence. Dimensions they could cross. Time, for the moment, still eluded them.

And they weren't pharaohs or time travellers or beings that encapsulated powers older than the worlds themselves, so all potential methods for erasing people from the flow of time eluded them.

Or not necessarily…

The Professor brought up a file: one of the four whose mere existence was a thorn in their sides, and their plans. One of four, they said, because the fifth still eluded them. They would need to play a little game to weed him out first, but they couldn't risk doing that with the other four pieces free to interfere. Things could all too easily slip from their control.

'What about him?' asked one of the lesser teachers. 'Aside from the fact that he is the closest thorn to us, being in this dimension of all of them and potentially the most dangerous…'

'Have you not noticed then?' the Professor asked. 'He is also the most vulnerable.'

The teachers glanced at each other. There were seven, plus the Professor who lorded them to make eight in all. 'How so?' one finally asked.

'He is not well known.' The Professor snapped his fingers. New records came up. The screen split into four again to show each of their targets, and their records. He picked one and enlarged it. 'Mutou Yugi: champion of Duellist Kingdom, champion of Battle City famously known for crowning him the King of Games and several others in between and since. Not to mention that, since he's the King of Games, every person in several dimensions know his name.'

He switched to a new set of records. 'Fudo Yusei. Fortune Cup victor. World Racing Grand Prix victor along with Jack Atlas and Crow Hogan. Likewise has appeared in several other tournaments since to defend his title as Duel King.'

He picked the third. 'Tsukumo Yuuma. Duel Carnival victor. Luckily for us, that's the only one however the entire dimension, give or take a few inattentive, saw said tournament.'

And the last. 'Yuki Juudai. Duel Academia student, graduated at the bottom of his class and famously the only student to remain in Orisis until graduation. Gained entry into the school by defeating a teacher's personal deck during the practical component of the entrance exam. Competed in the graduation duel during his first year on request of that year's dux and the duel ended in a draw. Major tournaments competed in include only the Genex tournament, and he did not place.'

That came as a surprise to some of the teachers, and not so the others who'd read the record, and yet it was confusing still. 'There's no record of a loss during the tournament,' one pointed out.

'No,' the Professor agreed. 'However the winner was Manjyoume Jun from Manjyoume cooperation, and the runner up was Saotome Rei.' There were a few grimaces at the name, from those who remembered her. A sticky end awaited that girl that was barely a woman, for something only very subtly within her control. 'While Yuki Juudai was never eliminated from the tournament, he also did not present himself on the final stage, for whatever reason. Since the Light of Ruin was said to have gone out around the same time, my guess would be he was busy dealing with that in the conclusion of the tournament and it did not wait for him.' He was smiling by the end of the speech, evidently finding the fact amusing. A few titters accompanied his words. The others just looked pitying, because it was quite an unfortunate reason to be taking out of the running in a tournament, and it sounded like Yuki Juudai had never gotten the chance to redeem himself as well.

'My point is,' the Professor continued, 'he is less conspicuous than the others. Everyone at Duel Academia knows him – from the year he entered the school up till now, but not a whole dimension. Not a whole world. He presented in one televised duel and it was interrupted. His name was also not mentioned in that broadcast. Here is a weak point we can attack. He is a person we can remove from the world without having to erase the memories of everyone in it.'

One of the teachers groaned at the report. 'If only the satellite could have been rebuilt.'

The satellite projection before the others. 'Ah,' said the Professor. 'The satellite that the Light of Ruin sought to use against our world. Unfortunately the Light of Ruin is a force we understand about as well as the Darkness, and the satellite would be little use to us without that knowledge.'

There was a pause as the others digested that. 'Then…' said one, finally. 'In terms of contact, Yuki Juudai is the easiest to erase from the minds of others. His work is to travel around like a herald aiding others, there one moment and gone the next. That aids us as well. However…'

'Yubel,' said another. 'And the fact that he can bring duel monster spirits to life. He will be a formidable opponent, and removing him from paper and mind will do us little good if he is still free to cause trouble for us.'

'And the Gentle Darkness he commands,' agreed the Professor. 'And even without the power of his friends, he was able to defeat Darkness. That is no small feat. However, that is an easier problem to deal with than erasing the memories of several generation of Academia students…and that is to say nothing of the other three.'

'Can we not deface them?' asked a teacher, 'instead of remove them? All stars one day go black, or go out.'

'But it takes too much time,' said another. 'If only we _could_ travel through time…'

'Which we cannot,' the Professor interrupted, 'and it is the third time today that has come up. I'd have you not repeat it again.'

'I apologise,' the teacher said stiffly, reprimanded. 'I can think of nothing else to add.'

The Professor turned away, his face carefully blank though the teacher was sure annoyance lurked beneath the mask. 'We may deface them,' he said, 'at least Tsukumo Yuuma and Fudo Yuusei. The latter might have been easier if we had acted three years before, but how were we to know…' He sighed. 'But Yuki Juudai is also the largest threat to us. The others will first have to learn to cross dimensions and find this place, but Yuki Juudai was a student here – and several times a guest speaker as well. The legend of his time at the Academia was kept alive quite nicely.'

'It was mostly the work of Chronos-sensei and Tenjoin-sensei,' said a teacher. 'Chronos-sensei has retired, however Tenjoin-sensei is still a member of the staff and she was not at all amendable to your early nudges.'

'Demonstrated by the fact that she is not privy to this meeting,' the Professor agreed. 'She may be a problem. She also may not be, once her memories of Yuki Juudai are removed. She is a clever duellist whose every move has a second meaning, and we have precious few duellists like that. It will be a shame to let go of her if we must.'

'Appropriate for the stealth teams, you mean?' a teacher asked. He looked slightly disappointed, though his duelling style was more assaultive and he couldn't have hoped for that honour himself.

'Indeed, the Professor affirmed. 'And they will prove valuable once we poke holes into the balance of these dimensions. But Tenjoin is not the immediate problem. We have the technology to wipe minds, though one at a time. But how many will remember him anyway?'

'None?' one ventured to guess.

'His parents,' said another. 'They still live, I believe. And some close friends?'

They looked at each other. 'Both are potentials,' said a third. 'The technology hasn't been tested on so grand a scale.'

'Ironically, one of its uses has been on the boy on question,' the Professor commented with a smile. 'But things don't have to be tested to a grand scale to see the holes it leaves behind.'

There was a pause as the teachers went back through the notes, looking for the incident they'd overlooked. In retrospect, they'd overlooked a lot but the Professor seemed to excel in finding such thorns in the rosebushes that would, if not pruned now, give them much future grief.

'Yubel,' said one, finally. 'Yuki Juudai was made to forget about Yubel. But since the two of them are now one, it's safe to say the memory wipe was ineffective.'

'Not until he was reminded,' the Professor corrected. 'Tenjoin was one of few witnesses to the circumstances that surrounded his remembering. He had odd dreams he couldn't place, but not until she arrived in close proximity of him and he didn't recall his past with her until she bid him to remember herself.' He paused, then added: 'if indeed, we can call her a _she_ , considering she is a spirit. Yuki Juudai is probably the only one aware of her true gender. Not that it is relevant, one way or another. Simply a curiosity.'

The teachers glanced at the record again. 'We are certain it was not a failing of the technology?' one asked.

'If it was, it has had over fifteen years to be corrected,' said another. 'The latest cases appear seal-tight at the moment – but then, this one cracked after nine years of no trouble.'

'One can also chalk it up to fate,' a third, almost tentatively, pointed out. 'He is this world's messiah. And she the shield.'

'No,' the Professor mused. 'She is the sword. If anyone is the shield, it is Yuuki Juudai himself.'

The teachers shared confused looks. 'How so?' one finally asked.

'Who made the attacking move?' was the response. 'Who made the first move? And who simply followed the prompts given to him, using the tools given to him. And he could not summon monsters to this world before Yubel. Isn't that the power of his that concerns us?'

There were varying degrees of assent amongst the teachers at the table. 'How then?' one finally asked. 'How do we defeat him?'

'By summoning real monsters ourselves,' was the Professor's matter-of-fact answer to that question. 'It is not the large hurdle it appears. More problematic will be erasing him from the minds of all who'll remember his story and name.'

'A large task,' the teachers agreed. 'And what will be done about the ones who've been affected too deeply by that boy?' Though he was a man now. The image they saw was a seventeen year old boy though, almost ready to graduate.

'I wonder,' said the Professor, but he didn't elaborate. And the teachers didn't ask him to. It was a meeting – the farce of a meeting more like – but they were well aware of how little they had contributed in the grander scheme. They provided the ears, and the manpower. And perhaps a way for the Professor to consolidate his own thoughts, with questions that must sound utterly juvenile to him. 'It will take some research still. Who to be extra careful with. Who to watch. And exactly how many people need to be erased.'

And that would be their jobs, like grunts under an executive because the Professor was the one leading them, the one coming up with the plans and calling the shots. The ones who would be actually in charge of erasing Yuki Juudai from the world, now that they had their mission orders. The ones who would erase the records, erase the memories, erase the person…

'How are we to summon real monsters?' one asked, realising that they'd let that slip in favour of the conversation.

The Professor smiled. 'With the help of another dimension's fruits.' The projector went blank, then showed a machine that looked like a particle emitter. 'Solid Vision. It uses mass particles to reconstruct holographic images.'

And, in theory, that was the last piece of the puzzle that would remove Yuki Juudai from the world. A complicated puzzle without access to a time machine or higher powers, but the Professor was fairly confident in it. The only faults lay in the bonds Yuki Juudai had formed with others – which could lead to more disposals than he wished, but not more than he could afford even in a worst case scenario – and his combat abilities.

But even the best fighter would be overwhelmed eventually. Nothing was absolute. Not even the divisions between dimensions. Not even the plans of the gods though he didn't doubt they would add a messiah as soon as he took one away – this time. But, slowly, they would pull the reigns of the world from those gods' hands, and he would dismantle their defences one by one to do so, starting with Yuuki Juudai who was both the weakest and strongest shield of all of them.


End file.
